Making ARt: It’s time to face our fears- and bury them in gorgeous paint

“Love & Trust”, painting and digital process, KGT

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. -Ambrose Redmoon

“We get lost in our daily life, and daily art. We don’t always like plans or structure or any kind of “system”. Then sometimes the lone artist encounters fears. Take heart, my dear friend artist. You are not alone. Read on.” -KGT

Recently I began making new art for a painting series scheduled to be exhibited in Denver May 1st. Lots of big white canvases are staring at me in and outside of my studio. There is always a moment of “GULP!” at the beginning of a painting. Trepidation.

I think painting might be a little like stand up comedy, from what I hear from the performers on shows like “Comedians in Cars, Getting Coffee” by Jerry Seinfeld and his comedy friends. (Great show, by the way.)  Some comedians say they are incredibly nervous right before they walk out, some nearly every time they perform, even if they’ve been doing it for quite a while.

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee photo, great show to listen to in the studio, btw.

I use a few little ways to get past the fear of beginning a painting. My main media is acrylic paint, but most of this translates to watercolor on paper too, after suggestion #1. Here are some action tips, see what works for you:

1. Tone the canvas with a bit of color you will use in your future painting idea. (See # 5. Color Plan.) This gets you painting in a non-threatening way, and the big bad white of the canvas is now gone. I like a light red or orange, sometimes just a tint. Maybe yellow or blue. Stay away from browns, dark grays or black. Keep it light.

2. Turn on music. Get a cup of coffee or tea. Start painting after 5 minutes or so, making sure all your supplies are ready to go.

3. Pretend this is your job and you must work it today, for however long a session you have in mind. You might get fired if you don’t produce! ( I actually importantly learned I could work this way when I got my first illustrator/designer job back in the day. There was no waiting for the creative “feeling” to appear, we just had to get going!)

Warm-up page, try white paint on a section of brown paper bag.

4. Warm-ups, warm-ups, warm-ups. Get a brush, a large cheap piece paper or two, and one or two colors of paint. Start making brush strokes on the page, any way you wish. Loopy loops, pouncing hits, drippy washes, just have some fun. Take as long as you wish. When I taught my painting classes, sometimes we would do warm-ups for as long as 20 minutes. You will not be painting on your new canvas stone cold now.

My writer daughter Anne reminded me that writers are encouraged to do warm-ups in the way of free writing. (This equates to the “Morning pages” I made while doing the Artist’s Way plan years ago. Julia Cameron book, check it out.) My musician brother and any singer or dancer will tell you this is just plain useful and what they do all the time. Why shouldn’t painters remember to do this too? Do you have your way of warming up, you painters out there? Please share.

Experimental watercolor palette, saved. A cropped part of this is now the image on my business card. Ha!

5. Make 2 plans. One is a little sketch for the composition idea. 3 x 4″ is fine, just something. I don’t work from elaborate drawings anymore, but I do like a sketch. The second plan is a color palette. Again, it doesn’t have to be elaborate, but creating by mixing a palette of 5 or 6 colors does get a person to feel more like jumping right in to paint. Don’t forget to place daubs of each color on a white page. Save this palette page for future reference.

6. Work in a size that is comfortable for you, especially if you have not painted for a while. No use scaring yourself silly with a giant canvas right at the git-go. It’s also better to work at a size that lets you make more paintings often. Don’t be a slave to a piece you can’t finish in a reasonable amount of time. For some that means finish in a week, for others it means finish in a day.

Buy a pad of canvas paper and make several smaller paintings with that. You can get 2 paintings out of a 16 x 20″ piece of canvas paper. I even do small color studies on 6 x 8″ pieces each. If you make a masterpiece painting on canvas paper you can always let the framer work their magic to be a gorgeous presentation piece.

7. Tell your inner self “This painting is not to be my masterpiece, but will get me to painting a really great painting someday.” Save this sentence. Repeat when you begin the next painting. And on and on. One day you will be painting great things and you won’t be worrying about starting new ones. You will love the process more, things will flow along, and don’t ever  EVER forget the warm-ups. Great ideas are born out of free-wheeling play.

End of story. I am reminding myself of these ideas I shared with you today.

We get lost in our daily life, and daily art. We don’t always like plans or structure or any kind of “system”. Take heart, my dear friend artist. You are not alone. Read on.

I just realized I should put this small paragraph at the top of the post. So I am placing it there now! There are no formulas for making art, because it is a discovery process for each individual, unique person. There is only sharing our images and our experiences. So let’s share more. Send me your art jpegs, I’d love to see them or please share your words too.

God bless and keep you, dear artist.

love, karen

Tags: abstract painting, acrylic painting, art and fear, color palettes, comedians in cars getting coffee, courage, drawing what you like, inpiration for painters, mixing paints, painting techniques, warm and cool colors